No More Tears - The Binding Of Isaac: Afterbirth Is Out

I quit. For the next three or so months, I have better things to do than write about video games: I shall be playing the one and only game, the game of games, the game’s game, The Binding of Issac: Rebirth [official site]. The roguelikelike shooter’s expansion ‘Afterbirth’ has just come out on Steam, adding a new character, hundreds of new items, enemies, bosses, areas, room layouts, and so on. Oh, plus a whole new mode, and something no day of my life will be complete without: daily runs.

Top tip: look for the ‘import data’ option on the save select screen or you, like me, may panic for a few minutes about losing all your unlocks.

‘New Stuff’ is fairly typical for expansions, but it’s all so very exciting in Isaac. One single item might change entirely how you play, especially when they start combining with other items, and one single enemy or room layout that might be easy on one run might be a real threat on the next. Even your own items can mean everything on one run but ruin the next (get tae fuck, Bob’s Brain). It’s a big load of ever-surprising chaos, made more interesting and delightful and awful the more strange things you throw into it. Even changes that might seem minute, like adding new long, thing rooms can be huge. Throw in stuff like new item combinations, new forms you can transform into, and new enemies and bosses to go up against, and I’m very excited to see how much changes.

That’s why I quit. Important business. I’ve got to train for the daily runs. Each day, all players will get to play the same run on the same seed, with one shot to climb the online leaderboards. I quit, bye.

Afterbirth will run you £7.99 on Steam. Folks who already owned Rebirth were offered a 40% discount on pre-ordering, but that’s over now.